


The Shirt Off His Back

by Rose Argent (roseargent)



Category: Vassalord
Genre: Half-Dressed Blood Drinking, M/M, Post-Canon, Semi-Public Blood Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-15
Updated: 2018-06-15
Packaged: 2019-05-23 20:23:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14940773
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/roseargent/pseuds/Rose%20Argent
Summary: Rayflo and Charley discover the effects of borrowed clothes on their love life.





	The Shirt Off His Back

**Author's Note:**

  * For [pirotess](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pirotess/gifts).



> This is always a fun canon to write for. I hope you enjoy it!

Charley hated the modelling, but it would be years before his lack of aging was suspicious enough for him to have an unassailable excuse to stop. So he was perhaps not in the best mood when he came home, and when Rayflo greeted him with "Yo. Welcome back, Cherry," he snapped at him without thinking. 

"It's Charley, for the _last time_..."

Rayflo just grinned and leaned against the windowsill, a cigarette dangling loosely from his fingers. "Probably not the last time."

It finally sank in that this scene was awfully familiar. Rayflo, in nothing but a barely-buttoned white shirt, waiting by the window with a cigarette. 

_Hope you don't mind me borrowing your shirt._

He had minded, at the time, which had probably--definitely--been part of the fun for Rayflo. Then he'd said something stupid about white being the colour of holy men and not for Rayflo. (But he'd kept that shirt, in secret, for the smell of cigarettes and Rayflo). He opened his mouth, meaning to say something, maybe apologise for things said out of spite, years ago, as if there hadn't been a hundred other little incidents just like it; all that came out was, "Is that my shirt?"

Looking down at one sleeve like he was just noticing now, Rayflo shrugged. "Seems like it, doesn't it? Well, it's not like you need it anymore, you've got a closet full of designer stuff." And the ability to will clothes into being, though he tried not to do that when he was going out for model work--it was hard to explain where the clothes went after he took them off.

Ash from the forgotten cigarette fell onto the floor, and Charley snapped out of his daze. "Use an ashtray!"

Rayflo laughed, but he did snub the cigarette out before it shed any more ash. 

Charley covered his face with his hands for a moment, trying to recover his composure. This was going all wrong, he was falling back into the role that was so familiar for so long. He took a deep breath, smelled cigarettes and Rayflo, felt the knots in his shoulders start to loosen.

It wasn't like before. He could appreciate, now, the way Rayflo looked in nothing but his borrowed shirt. He could let himself look at the way it only barely covered enough, the way the crisp whiteness of it almost disappeared against Rayflo's pale skin. His eyes were drawn down to Rayflo's abs, only just visible above the mere two buttons he'd fastened, and his mouth watered, his canines grew into fangs.

Rayflo's grin widened and he toyed with one button, never quite undoing it. "See something you like?"

"Yes." Charley was on Rayflo before he knew he meant to move, hands tearing open that shirt with a satisfying pop of buttons giving way. The fabric of the shirt was solid, real under his hands, instead of melting away into nothing at need. 

"You're going to ruin your own shirt." Rayflo didn't sound upset by the idea. At all. Charley found he wasn't, either.

Sliding his hands around Rayflo's back and down to his ass, Charley lifted him and set him down to perch on the sill of the open window. Only night air and a long fall awaited if Rayflo leaned back too far, but knowing that the fall couldn't hurt Rayflo--that he would only turn into bats and fly away--somehow didn't lessen the thrill of it, for Charley. Maybe not for Rayflo, either, because he only laughed again and ran a hand through Charley's hair.

"You aren't worried someone will see?"

"No." But part of him was, that little--sometimes not so little--part that was still clinging to outward signs of virtue as if they could wipe away what he was. He laid his hands on the cool, pale flesh of Rayflo's thighs and ruthlessly silenced that part of himself. 

Rayflo spread his legs at the touch, balanced on the narrow window sill as comfortably as if it was the broad surface of their bed. "I worry your new model friends are teaching you bad things."

"Worry?" Charley tightened his grip on Rayflo's thighs, leaving little bruises that faded almost as fast as he made them; Rayflo shivered, toes curling against the wall. "Or hope?"

Charley knelt between Rayflo's spread legs, pressing his mouth to the inside of one thigh. He could feel the blood thrumming under his lips, but he didn't bite, savouring the moment, the taste of Rayflo's unbroken skin. But even Rayflo's skin tasted a little of blood, or maybe like the promise of blood, and Charley couldn't resist that call for long. He bit down, fangs sinking into Rayflo's flesh with only a hint of resistance, and let his Master's blood fill his mouth. 

The hitch in Rayflo's breathing, the tensing of his thighs under Charley's hands and mouth, only spurred him on and he started to suck harder. He heard a creaking noise, and then a crack, and he looked up just long enough to see Rayflo gripping the window frame with both hands, hard enough that the wood had splintered.

He withdrew his mouth, just to hear Rayflo's shaky, disappointed gasp, and then bit down again, harder, higher up on his thigh. Rayflo's legs trembled under him, and Charley wrapped his arms around Rayflo's waist to hold him steady. "So... greedy..." Rayflo's voice was barely above a whisper, but his grip shifted to Charley's hair, holding his head--and mouth--where it was.

Trusting Charley to keep him from falling. 

The thin thread of control Charley had managed to maintain snapped, then, and for a time he was aware only of Rayflo's blood, Rayflo's quiet gasps and moans, the trembling of Rayflo's thighs. 

When Rayflo sagged against him bonelessly, Charley came back to himself and felt a pang of guilt. He hadn't drained Rayflo to the point of fainting in... he wasn't sure, actually. A long time. He cradled Rayflo against his chest, carried him to their bed, and winced as the punctures in his thigh continued to ooze blood instead of healing right away. 

Despite his worry and the blood-fuelled energy that should be surging through his veins, Charley drifted off to sleep only moments after curling himself around Rayflo's still form, lulled by the smell of cigarettes and his Master. 

~~~

If anyone at the party had noticed that two buttons on Charley's shirt were sewn on with a different colour of thread than the rest, they hadn't said anything. The blood stains on the bottom edge of the shirt would have harder to explain away, if they hadn't been well hidden by Charley's trousers and suit jacket. He knew they were there, though, could smell the faintest hint of Rayflo's blood every time he moved. It made the party more bearable, made smiling blandly at people he had no interest in easier.

The one up side of parties meant for fashion people was that when he refused to take any of the food being offered, no one wondered why: it was assumed that he was trying to fit into something for an upcoming photo shoot. Really, though, it wasn't much of an up side, more of a lack of an additional down side. Charley hated these parties. He managed to get out of most of them--having a mysterious, standoffish image wasn't exactly a problem in this industry, as long as he was pleasant enough to actually work with--but this one was a fundraiser for one of Christopher J. Goss's favourite charities.

He'd been there for an excruciating hour and a half, smiling and making empty comments he didn't remember a moment later, when a minor commotion near the door drew his attention. It was quiet murmurs and a subtle shifting of the crowd rather than screaming and running, so Charley made his way towards the potential distraction at a leisurely pace instead of a run. Nearly a third of the partygoers were clustered loosely around a newcomer by the time Charley got there, but even through the crowd Charley recognised him.

Rayflo was dressed casually for a party like this, in not much more than his usual unbuttoned black shirt, trousers, and a braided leather cord looped a couple times around his throat. Charley knew for a fact that Rayflo had literally rolled out of bed and created that outfit out of thin air, yet he'd come out of it looking like it had taken a pack of stylists hours to put him together. Everyone was looking at him. Several producers were practically salivating, and it took every scrap of willpower Charley had to keep from baring his fangs at them.

"Chris, there you are." Rayflo's smile simultaneously lit up the room and smouldered like a banked fire, and for just a moment Charley forgot anyone else was there to see it. That insufferable, heartstopping smile was _his_.

The moment passed and Charley fought down a worried--not jealous, worried--scowl, pasting on his professional smile, instead. "I wasn't expecting to see you here."

A little bit of a smirk bled into Rayflo's smile for a split second; probably no one but Charley even noticed. "I wasn't planning on coming, but I just had to see you." Then he took Charley's arm and steered him away from the crowd as smoothly as if they'd practised it. "You look like you could use some fresh air."

A collective, disappointed sigh followed their exit, and Charley clenched his jaw to hold in an unwise comment. He did still need to work with some of these people tomorrow.

The balconies at this venue were fairly secluded, potted plants and cleverly placed screens making it difficult to see anything either from inside or from any of the other balconies, which was probably one reason it was popular for events like this. As soon as they were out of sight, Rayflo lit up a cigarette and leaned back against the balustrade. 

"What are you doing here?" Half the people who'd seen Rayflo tonight were going to want to hire him. More were going to want to sleep with him. The former was too risky, the latter... Charley narrowed his eyes at Rayflo suspiciously even at the thought. 

"I thought you might be feeling a little lonely." Rayflo gave a casual little shrug, but his smile was knowing, bordering on smug.

"What? Why would you think that?" This wasn't exactly the first party Charley had had to attend for work, and even if he hated them he'd always been perfectly capable of handling them on his own. 

Rayflo's smile tipped over into full blown smugness, and he looked down at the buttons on Charley's shirt. 

There was no innocent reason Charley could think of for why he'd worn a mended, bloodstained shirt to a fancy fashion industry party, and he felt his cheeks heat with embarrassment that Rayflo had caught him at it. He'd made a show of throwing the shirt out and everything! He'd waited until Rayflo was out of the apartment before retrieving it from the trash, and hidden it away deep in the recesses of his closet. 

The movement of the braided leather choker drew Charley's eye to Rayflo's throat as he cocked his head to the side. Calculated, so obviously calculated, and it still _worked_ \--Charley couldn't look away.

"Or maybe you're just hungry. Though I don't see how, with that meal you had the other night."

Charley's mouth was suddenly dry, and his canines just a little longer than they should be. There was never a moment he wasn't hungry for Rayflo, if he was being honest with himself (though he might never be quite that honest with Rayflo). But he forced his gaze away from Rayflo's throat, looking out over his shoulder at the city lights. "I took too much last time." He'd given much of it back, when they woke up, but he didn't quite trust himself again yet.

"Then maybe I'm the one who's hungry." Rayflo reached for him, with that lazy grace that was almost hypnotic, snagging the front of his shirt and pulling him closer. Charley let himself be drawn against Rayflo, lifting one hand to rest it against Rayflo's bare chest. Rayflo's skin was cool as the night air under his fingers, perfect and pale like moonlight, unmarked by fang, unstained by blood. _Oh_ , how Charley wanted to fix that, but the greedy child inside him was still too close to the surface, and couldn't be trusted.

Rayflo waited a heartbeat, giving Charley the chance to pull away, and then his mouth was at Charley's throat. Charley hardly felt the fangs pierce his skin, sharp and sure, but as Rayflo teased a mouthful of blood from his vein he felt that familiar, shivery lassitude take him. He leaned against Rayflo, lost in the sensations, in the sweet tickle of Rayflo's lips and tongue against his skin, in the steady beat of Rayflo's heart under his hand. He could smell blood--his own blood that only ever smelled of his Master--and wanted so badly to tilt his head and sink his teeth into Rayflo in turn, but Rayflo pulled away before he could give in to the temptation. 

Licking a crimson drop from his lips with that tantalising forked tongue, Rayflo gave Charley a gentle shove that sent him stumbling back a couple steps. "Go on back to your party. I'll be waiting at home." It sounded like a promise of more, but he was gone in a cloud of bats before Charley could say a word. 

Charley was so busy feeling put out by Rayflo's sudden departure that he didn't notice until later that Rayflo had left him with a single drop of blood staining the inside of the shirt collar, so that the scent of his/Rayflo's blood was strong in his nose the rest of the party.

It felt like a very, very long night until Charley was able to get home and see what else Rayflo had in store for him.


End file.
